AMD1968
Hello, AMD1968, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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before the question. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 10:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
Conflict of interest in Wikipedia
editHi AMD1968 I work on conflict of interest issues here in Wikipedia. I saw your edits about MagVenture. I'm giving you notice of our Conflict of Interest guideline and Terms of Use, and will have some comments and questions for you below.
Hello, AMD1968. We welcome your contributions to Wikipedia, but if you have an external relationship with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest or close connection to the subject.
All editors are required to comply with Wikipedia's neutral point of view content policy. People who are very close to a subject often have a distorted view of it, which may cause them to inadvertently edit in ways that make the article either too flattering or too disparaging. People with a close connection to a subject are not absolutely prohibited from editing about that subject, but they need to be especially careful about ensuring their edits are verified by reliable sources and writing with as little bias as possible.
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For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you.
Comments and question
editWikipedia is a widely-used reference work and managing conflict of interest is essential for ensuring the integrity of Wikipedia and retaining the public's trust in it. As in academia, COI is managed here in two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. Please note that there is no bar to being part of the Wikipedia community if you have a conflict of interest; there are just some things we ask you to do (and if you are paid, some things you need to do).
Disclosure is the most important, and first, step. While I am not asking you to disclose your identity (anonymity is strictly protecting by out WP:OUTING policy) would you please disclose if you have some connection with MagVenture? You can answer how ever you wish (giving personally identifying information or not), but if there is a connection, with please disclose it. After you respond (and you can just reply below), perhaps we can talk a bit about editing Wikipedia, to give you some more orientation to how this place works. Thanks!
You can reply here - I am watching this page. Once you do, we can take it from there. Thanks in advance for talking! Jytdog (talk) 10:15, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
- hi JytDog, thanks for the information. This is my first try as a Wikipedian and I am happy for all the support I can get! I can confirm that I am indeed affiliated with MagVenture. Should this information somehow be added in my update? If so, how do I do that? We would also like to add that we are also CE approved in Europe, but for this approval there is no external link (CE markings are not listed like the FDA approvals are). So does this mean that we can not post this information without a link to an external source? AMD1968 (talk) 10:33, 20 August 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for replying! Quick note on Wikipedia logistics, or maybe better, etiquette. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two intents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages. That is how we know who said what. Will reply on the substance in a second...Jytdog (talk) 12:56, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
- OK... thanks for disclosing your connection with MagVenture. Let me deal with the COI stuff first, and your question about the CE mark later.
- Management of COI in Wikipedia has two steps - disclosure and a form of peer review. You are clearly a published scientist so you know the drill on academic publishing and disclosure of COI when you present or submit a manuscript. In Wikipedia, that disclosure should go on the relevant article Talk page (which I already did for you), and on your user page (which is here: [[User:AMD1968]). Something simple like "I am employee of MagVenture, a company that makes systems for Transcranial magnetic stimulation." would be great. Would you please take care of that?
- The peer review" piece may seem a bit strange to you at first, but if you think about it, it will make sense. In Wikipedia, editors can immediately publish their work, with no intervening publisher or standard peer review -- you can just create an article, click save, and viola there is a new article, and you can go into any article, make changes, click save, and done. No intermediary. What we ask editors who have a COI to do, is a) if you create an article, submit it through the WP:AFC process so it can be reviewed before it publishes. b) And if you want to change content in an existing article on a topic where you have a COI, we ask you to propose content on the Talk page for others to review and implement before it goes live, instead of doing it directly yourself. You can make the edit request easily - and provide notice to the community of your request - by using the "edit request" function as described in the conflict of interest guideline. I made that easy for you by adding a section to the beige box at the top of the Talk page at Talk:Transcranial magnetic stimulation - there is a link at "click here" in that section -- if you click that, the Wikipedia software will automatically format a section in which you can make your request.
- Will you please make the COI disclosure on your user page, and agree to follow the peer review processes? Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 13:09, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
- Responding now about the CE mark - everything in Wikipedia needs to reliably sources, per WP:VERIFY, which is policy. Is there really no source independent of MagVenture that reported on the CE mark? (press releases are not good) Jytdog (talk) 13:10, 21 August 2015 (UTC)